About
Software developer, civic hacker, and community animator.
Hello! My name's Patrick Connolly, but the internet usually lets me go by "patcon".
I'm a software developer and civic hacker. For me, that means that I'm interested in the material and the meta of civic life. Which is to say both the tangible day-to-day, and the more abstract systems which underpin that.
I spend my time trying to help government and civic systems work more like the open-source communities I know and love.
My primary affiliation (ie. the one I'm most proud of), is being an animator within the Civic Tech Toronto community.
I like to say that I spend time in spaces that capitalism isn't curious about. It's understandably hard to get paid doing that work, so please consider supporting me on Patreon if you've been positively affected by things I help maintain!
No amount is too small -- My gratitude isn't tied to any dollar amounts! If money isn't the way you move in the world, then no worries :)
What I Do
Civic Technology
Building tools that make government and public institutions more transparent and participatory — from Toronto Councilmatic to voter registration APIs to data preservation initiatives.
Open Source
Contributing to and maintaining open-source projects as a way of life — from early work at Gittip pioneering sustainable funding models, to libraries like Red Dwarf and curated resources like Awesome Polis.
Community Building
Animating communities like Civic Tech Toronto, co-founding Hypha worker co-operative, and fostering spaces where designers, coders, policy-makers, and neighbours come together around shared problems.
Digital Democracy
Exploring tools for collective decision-making — from Polis and liquid democracy experiments to plural research approaches — across Toronto, Taiwan, Berlin, and London.